Although the operations of assembling and disassembling an electrical connector do not normally present special difficulties, the need is felt on-board manned spacecrafts to reduce the forces required to perform these operations to beneath certain critical values because the space environment imposes bulky equipment on astronauts, limiting their freedom of movement and thus the forces they can apply, and this applies both to operations performed manually and to operations performed using tools.
The design of prior art circularly symmetrical connectors for use on the ground, i.e. under normal conditions, is such that the forces required for connecting or disconnecting such connectors are high compared with the values which would be desirable for space applications. This is due to the fact that it is necessary to overcome the friction forces between the terminals via which electrical contact is established, which forces arise during assembly or disassembly of a connector from the very beginnings of such assembly or disassembly.
Connectors of the type having a so-called "linear" structure have already been made in which cams are used for moving the electrical terminals apart while the connector is being assembled or disassembled, thereby reducing the force required for assembly or disassembly. However, in such cases it is necessary to apply two independent actions, and as a result such connectors do not lend themselves to space applications. Further, in such linear connectors, contact is ensured by the elastic properties of the electrical terminals, thereby considerably reducing the contact forces employed, and thus reducing the reliability of the contacts established. In any event, a satisfactory and reliable solution has yet to be proposed for connectors having circular symmetry.
The object of the present invention is thus to provide a connector of the type said to have circular symmetry (about a longitudinal axis, and thus, in fact, having cylindrical symmetry), suitable for satisfying practical requirements better than prior art connectors, in particular with respect to enabling connection and disconnection operations to be performed by applying relatively low forces.